Category Archives: Today’s News

Pastor Christopher Brooks Hosting Today

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Pastor Christopher Brooks from Evangel Ministries in Detroit and host of the Equipped for Life radio broadcast heard weekdays at 3:00 pm ET on FaithTalk 1500 will sit in my seat today:

Early in his childhood, Christopher W. Brooks began attending Evangel Ministries, where he surrendered his life to Christ at the age of 13. Born and raised in a Christian home, he benefited from observing his parents live out their commitment to Christ in pastoral ministry and Christian radio broadcasting. Pastor Brooks’ father, a preacher for more than 30 years and an avid reader, provided him with access to a myriad of spiritual resources. Pastor Brooks became an enthusiastic learner with an unquenchable desire to know the Lord more intimately, and the truths of the Christian faith more intellectually.

As a teenager, he began to minister to his peers in his school, neighborhood, and community. He quickly became one of the first youth leaders in Chosen Generation. Pastor Brooks’ zeal for evangelism burgeoned in high school, where he passionately shared his faith with anyone who would listen. Many of Pastor Brooks’ closest friends, who initially rejected the Gospel, later came to Christ as they witnessed the true transformation of his life and his sincere commitment to Christian living.

His desire to see his peers come to salvation continued when he enrolled at Michigan State University (MSU) in 1993. Along with a friend, Pastor Brooks began a Bible study and prayer ministry in his dormitory. The first week drew just two people, but by the third week the group had grown to more than 90 students, who attended weekly times of study and intercession. While Pastor Brooks prayed for revival to break forth at MSU, his passion was greeted with both excitement by some, and sharp criticism and attacks by others. For nearly a year, he would often debate and discuss the Christian faith with students who did not believe in Christ. Though some students were very hostile, most were open to hearing a clear, rational and Biblical defense of Christianity. Over the next four years, Pastor Brooks was devoted to sharing the Gospel with as many students as possible. Through evangelism, mentorship and apologetics (defending the faith), the word spread and lives were changed.

After earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in Finance and Administration from MSU, Pastor Brooks was asked to return to Evangel Ministries to serve in a formal capacity. Although he was working in corporate America as a financial advisor and experiencing much success, he gladly accepted the call to pastoral ministry. In 1998, he became a youth pastor and by 2000 he was the assistant pastor of the church. As assistant pastor, Pastor Brooks created the Evangel Ministries Economic Restoration Group (E.M.E.R.G.) to provide financial planning, debt management and employment training for Evangel’s members. In 2004, Pastor Brooks accepted the role of Senior Pastor of this thriving, inner-city church, which has a membership of more than 2,000.

For seven years, Pastor Brooks has hosted Equipped for Life, one of the most widely heard Christian radio programs in the Detroit metropolitan area. Equipped for Life airs on the Salem Communications network, which is the largest Christian broadcasting corporation in the United States. In addition, the broadcast airs on Family Radio Network in the African nations of Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda, reaching approximately 5 million listeners daily.

Pastor Brooks is dedicated to providing biblically-sound exegetical teaching, along with strong training in apologetics. In January 2006, Brooks founded a state-licensed seminary preparation institution called the Detroit Bible Institute, which graduated its first class in the summer of 2007. In addition to being the founder and president of this training program, he is also the primary instructor of Apologetics and has taught the Pastoral Leadership and Systematic Theology courses. The Detroit Bible Institute is home to more than 175 students and offers a one-year diploma in Biblical Studies. Brooks’ great passion is to win his generation to Christ through local, national and international evangelism and missions and to promote apologetics training in urban cities and churches.

Pastor Brooks serves in ministry with his wife, Minister Yodit Brooks, who is also a Bible teacher. They have two children.

Acton’s Jordan Ballor on Abraham Kuyper

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The Acton Institute in Grand Rapids has undertaken the Abraham Kuyper Common Grace Translation Project. From their press release:

In November, Christian’s Library Press is publishing Wisdom & Wonder: Common Grace in Science & Art, a new and complete translation of two sections that were inadvertently omitted from the first edition of Kuyper’s larger three-volume work on common grace. These sections were first published separately and then added in later editions of the three volume set. Kuyper’s timeless work shows us that God is not absent from the non-church areas of our common life and bestows his gifts and favor to all people.

Popular in our time for his devotional material, Kuyper’s Wisdom & Wonder displays his talents as a public theologian, focusing on his comprehensive and Reformed vision of science and art.

As evangelicals face massive cultural shifts, the question hangs in the air: How will they respond? What evangelicals believe influences how they respond and this will have significant ramifications for the future of a free society and its business, economic, and public sectors.

Richard Mouw, president of Fuller Theological Seminary and author of Abraham Kuyper: A Short and Personal Introduction, says that the appearance of this treatise in English translation “is for me the beginning of a larger dream come true. Kuyper’s writings on common grace are much needed ‘for such a time as this’ andWisdom & Wonder is a marvelous foretaste of more that is to come!”

Sometimes the way forward is found by looking back. Wisdom & Wonder provides insight for the road ahead, appearing with a foreword by Gabe Lyons and Jon Tyson and an introduction by Vincent E. Bacote, associate professor of theology at Wheaton College and author of The Spirit in Public Theology: Appropriating the Legacy of Abraham Kuyper. The volume is edited by Jordan J. Ballor and Stephen J. Grabill and translated by Nelson D. Kloosterman.

Paul spoke with Acton’s Jordan Ballor, co-editor of the first volume in the project,  on Friday, October 7, 2011:

Jordan_Ballor_on_Abraham_Kuyper.mp3

Steve Jobs: Blind Visionary

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Enough will be written about Steve Jobs, and with much more eloquence than I am capable of.  Suffice it to say, Steve changed the world. He changed MY world. In all the same ways he changed yours.

Steve Jobs gained the world, but sadly he did so at the cost of his soul. This is Steve Jobs at Stanford University on June 12, 2005:

You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

And later in the same speech, this:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

Steve’s philosophy of living by “your own inner voice” and following “your heart and intuition” without regard to objective truth – especially as that truth is revealed in the word of God – is humanistic and eternally fatal.

Death is not the single best invention in life. It’s an enemy. It is the consequence of the very philosophy of life which Steve encouraged those kids on a beautiful spring afternoon at Stanford to pursue: don’t listen to anyone or anything but yourself and your own heart. “As by one man (Adam) sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.” Adam followed his heart, and we followed Adam into death.

The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Out of the heart proceeds all manner of evil. Following your heart – unless and until it is transplanted by the Spirit and Word of God – will gain you the world but cost you your soul.

And when death comes, you haven’t merely been “cleared away,” Steve. Death is judgment – the physical consequence of the fall of Adam. And physical death releases the soul into the presence of the Creative Genius to whom we must give an account. The only way to truly live, Steve, is to live Someone else’s life. Crucified with Christ, nevertheless alive – not me – but Christ – truly living by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me.

For all of his creative genius and vision, Steve Jobs was blind (it appears) to the light of the glorious gospel in the face of Jesus Christ. His vision changed the world. His blindness – his inability to truly see the only thing worth seeing – cost him his soul. Steve Jobs could see the future. A tragedy that he could not see eternity.

6th Circuit hearing arguments in Julea Ward’s EMU case today

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From FOX NEWS:

An attorney for a graduate student claiming she was wrongfully dismissed from her counseling job at a Michigan college because she refused to work with gay and bisexual clients argued in federal court Tuesday that his client was discriminated against because of her religious beliefs — while the school insists her actions violated school policy.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati heard arguments in the case involving Julea Ward, a Detroit-area public school teacher. In July 2010, a federal judge dismissed Ward’s lawsuit against Eastern Michigan University (EMU) after the school successfully contended she violated school policy and the American Counseling Association’s code of ethics, which forbids counselors from discrimination in clinical practice.

FULL STORY HERE